I'm gonna be a knight someday
by Jelly28
Summary: Guy and hannah were once childhood friends. Now she finds him again...and discovers what a terrible person he has become. drama, adventure, maybe a bit of romance...
1. Some field somewhere

Guy and I peered into the den.

It was a bright summers day and yet the morning sunlight only crept a little way into the den before being swallowed by total darkness. No matter how much I squinted it couldn't see a thing.

The hole was set into the side of a grassy hillock and bordered with ferns and freshly dug earth. Yet it was bigger than any rabbit hole- even any foxhole that I had seen before. I could have fit into it on my hands and knees and I was coming on for eight years old!

I nudged Guy out the way a bit and leaned further in.

"Hellloooo!" I called into the darkness, to whatever lived in there. "Come out, come out whoever you arr-argh!" My shout turned into a shriek as a small hand grabbed my arm and tugged me sharply away from the den. I stumbled backwards and fell into the grass to see Guy looking horrified.

"What are you doing?" He whispered, eyes wide. "If you do that you'll attract it!"

I frowned at him. "What are you on about Guy? And look what you've done to my dress. It's all mucky now." I stood up and tried to brush away the soil. Guy, ignoring me, was cautiously approaching the hole. He stopped at the side of the den, crouched down and, with a brave expression, peeked into the darkness.

I gave up on my dress- the grass stains couldn't be cured- and walked over. Guy stood up. "I think we're safe now."

"Safe from WHAT?"

Guy gave me a patronizing look. "The ghost of course."

I snorted. How old did he think I was? But Guy was looking hurt at my reaction.

"It's true!" He said, following as I shook my head and started to walk back down the hill to our village.  "Ghosts always live in big fox dens. Mary told me. Only I didn't have a chance to tell you before you went disturbing it! If I hadn't stopped you…" He trailed off dramatically.

"What- it would have eaten us?" I laughed. "Mary's just teasing you, Guy," I said sympathetically. "That's what big sisters do. Ghosts don't exist."

"They do!" He insisted, though he was starting to turn red. "I'll prove it to you!" And then he was running past me, away down the hill, leaving me staring after him bemused.

Guy could be so strange sometimes.

***

"Stop here!" I ordered the horsemen, and my magnificent carriage ground to a halt. Gracefully, I brushed aside the purple curtain, walked down the golden steps and surveyed my surroundings. We had come to the border of Nottingham village, a marvellous place bordered with rolling fields and governed by the kindest sheriff in the world, who would welcome me with open arms into his town, where I would live out my days in happiness. And dad and granny and the rest of my village would be there and…and…

And now it was just getting silly.

I shook the stupid fantasy from my mind and continued to trudge through the muddy field, my head lowered against the ever-pounding rain. It was coming on for nightfall and there wasn't a soul about, never mind horse drawn carriages. Not that I'd ever be able to afford one anyway.

Drenched to the bone, practically penniless and close to feinting, I struggled on, heading for the hazy village on the horizon. For reasons I wasn't going to think about…I had been forced to leave my home some weeks ago. Since then I had been stopping at the odd barn that would house me, but mostly sleeping under whatever cover I could find from the wind and the rain. I didn't know what I was looking for, or where I was head but when I stopped at the last barn, I had been so relieved when they told me a village was nearby.

But then they had told me its name. Nottingham. And right then, however pleased I was at finding proper civilization, I knew I would NOT be staying long at this village. One did not hear good things about Nottingham.

A corrupt, crazy sheriff had taken rein there recently. He was said to be making the peoples' lives a misery. I'd heard all sorts of stories of daily public torture, mad taxing hangings and murder: the people would be punished whenever the sheriff felt like it. Some even said the village was ridden with plague: that the evil and the misery there spurred the illness.

Of course, there was also the story of "Robin Hood". There were plenty of rumours that spoke of this mysterious, arrow-wielding hero…I won't pretend I wasn't just a bit curious to see if this courageous forest dweller actually existed.

But even so, I wouldn't be staying at Nottingham if I had a choice.

Unfortunately, with no food and feeling close to collapsing, I didn't.

When I finally reached the village I was relieved to find the rumours of the plague were false: at least, there were no dead bodies about.

The matter of the sheriff though, I could only assume to be true. The guard at the wall let me in, after it became obvious I wasn't a threat, and, seeing how desperate i was for some sort of shelter, making me pay him every last penny I had.

But once I stepped through the large iron gate, I became uneasy. The whole atmosphere of the village had a sense of fear about it. There were plenty of people about but hardly any chatter: everyone went about their business with their heads down, as if a relaxed friendly conversation would have cost them a hand.

This made trying to find somewhere to stay a lot harder than usual. Most people didn't even bother to open their doors when I knocked. After asking probably half the village and still having not received one positive reply, it was growing dark. Utterly exhausted I collapsed against a stable wall and sank to the ground. 

Of the people that had bothered to open their doors, the responses I'd received had not been aggressive or unfriendly exactly, but again the people just seemed frightened. They would apologise, avoid eye contact and quietly shut their doors. I could only assume they were afraid of the sheriff's response in housing a stranger: after all, a half starved young woman is hardly something to be scared of.

Leaning my head against the brick wall, defeated and sick with tiredness, I closed my eyes. 


	2. Nottingham

I was sat on the floor of our kitchen. The brick stove, hot and steaming, had a large black pot underneath and was boiling something like soup.

I looked around happily. The room was all made of brick, the walls a warm reddish colour and there were lots of pots and pans littering the floor and walls. The room was filled with a light sort of smoke, but even as I watched the smoke got thicker, blacker, and something bit my hand.

A deep red creature was sitting on the floor, my blood around its mouth, a deep cut in my hand. I'd heard stories about that creature.

It was a fire demon.

And suddenly there was a screeching and ringing inside my head and I looked to the stove where it had erupted in flames, and I scrambled to my feet and ran, ran away from the stove, ran through the house- but everything was covered in fire, bursting out in flame and tears were streaming down my face, I couldn't see- and...

....and I reached our kitchen.

Mum was sat at the wooden table. The walls were all made of stone and warm light flooded in from the open curtains fluttered there in the morning breeze.

Mum was knitting a long white cloth while by the stove, which was small and made from grey brick, stood Mary. She was busy making dinner, chopping up carrots from the garden. I watched them silently. They didn't notice me there, but I was fine like this, happy just watching them.

But then the door opened. And an armoured man threw a teenage Guy inside, who stumbled and fell to the floor. "This one was trying to escape. Says he's going to become a knight!" The man laughed. "Well I'm the sheriff of this house and you'll have to be punished!"

And he held up a burning torch and flung it at them and the table burst into flames and it was the same as before. Fire everywhere. I couldn't run, I was frozen and I watched them all screaming and then I was choking, choking with the tears, the smoke, the shrieks-"

***

"Miss!"

I woke with a cry, gasping in air and blinking back tears to see a man stood over me. I didn't know where I was and for a moment I thought he was the sheriff, the man from my dream. But then my surroundings came into focus and I realised it was night- and I was in Nottingham.

Breathing deeply, groaning, I lent my head in shaking hands. It wasn't new, that dream. I'd had too many of them recently. But they never got any better, and I was never any less shaken or full of horror afterwards.

"Are- are you alright? I was feeding the animals and I heard you screaming in your sleep…" The man trailed off.

Taking one last shuddering breath I managed to compose myself and look up. I didn't know how long I was asleep, but night had already fallen, so much so I could hardly make out the man before me.

His silhouette was tall, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw that he was old: perhaps coming on for fifty.

"You look soaked to the bone miss- you can't stay here." He gestured to the wall where I was lent. "I can offer you a bed in the stables if you wish…"

Wearily, gratefully, I nodded and clambered unsteadily to my feet. Disorientated, my head still full of the burning images of mum, Guy, Mary… it wasn't until the man had steered me into the barn, over to a warm pile of hay and I had sat down that I realised the guard had taken the last of my money.

Reluctantly, with all the strength I could muster, I tore myself away from my bed, put my bag back on my back and tiredly stood up. "Sir…" The man, almost at the door now, turned. "I'm sorry- thank you for the offer, but I can't stay here. I have no money…"

The man turned and smiled. "You lie back down miss. You're not doing me any harm staying here." He shook his head. "If you still feel that bad about it in the morning, you can take some of my animals up to the castle. Sheriff makes us pay extra taxes in livestock you see, and my legs aren't as steady as they used to be."

Blissfully I sank back down. "Of course."

The man nodded, closing the stable door. "Goodnight, miss."

***


	3. The barn

**Hi everyone- just wanted to say thanks for reading my fanfic!**

**If you have the time to review and tell me what you think (even if its bad!) that would be great :)**

**Hope you enjoy!**

**from Jelly28 xxx**

**ps. I will include some characters that are actually from Robin Hood soon!!**

************************************************************************

The next day I woke to more gorgeous sunlight. It flowed through our small bedroom windows, filling the whole room with warmth.

I pulled my blanket up to my neck and stayed lying in bed for a while, watching the strip of bright blue sky I could see from the window. Thin wisps of cloud were moving slowly across it.

From the clatter in the kitchen I could tell mum was already up. The fact that it was daylight meant dad definitely would be. He always got up extra early- especially in the spring- to work on the fields.

I knew mum would be in here in a moment to tell me to get up too, to help her with the housework and then to go and give dad a hand outside. So I tried to stay extra quiet for a while, so she wouldn't notice I was awake and I could lie for a bit in the sunlight.

It worked for a while, until there was a knock on the door. I heard it open, and a small voice say, "um, hello- is Hannah there please?"

I heard mum laugh. "Always so serious, Guy! Come on in- it's about time she woke up anyway."

I jumped out of bed at the sound of this and rushed into the kitchen. "I'm up!" I announced, "hi Guy".

"You're still in your _nightdress_", Guy said, looking slightly annoyed. "I've been up for ages- I need to show you something."

"Well I'm afraid it'll have to wait until Hannah's done her chores first," mum interjected. Guy's face fell- and then he glowered at me. I looked pleadingly at mum- but she didn't budge.

"Someone needs to feed the chickens, Hannah, and its not me whos been lying in bed all morning."

"If you wanted me up you should have woken me," I grumbled, but under my breath. I knew it was useless, and maybe if I didn't get on mum's bad side she'd let me go see what guy wanted Guy before I had to go and help dad.

I wondered what was so important that Guy'd come over here. Usually he wasn't allowed out of the house until evening. Compared to my parents Guy's dad was scarily strict. He made Guy and Mary help with his blacksmiths work almost all the time.

Once I was dressed, I came back into the kitchen to find guy seated at the table supplied with a large plate of biscuits. Honestly. Mum always fussed over Guy way too much. I think its because he didn't have a mum himself- or maybe because his dad was so strict. But I can't remember the last time she made biscuits- had she kept a special stash of them especially for Guy??

I sat down at the table and reached out to pinch one off his plate- but before I could mum plonked a bag of chicken feed on the table in front of me. "Off you go honey."

I glowered at her, grabbed the bag and went outside leaving Guy to his biscuits.

***

It was raining heavily when I woke. I could hear it hammering off the barn roof and the roar of a gale blowing through the Nottingham streets. I wanted nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep. This barn was dryer than most, and although I had had a few nightmares as always, they hadn't been too horrible last night.

But I remembered my promise to the owner of the barn, and I knew that going back to sleep may well mean the old man would be too polite to wake me, and end up having to take the taxes to the castle himself.

I sat up, groggily, and searched around in the darkness for my bag. Then I walked over to the crack of light coming from the barn door. As I neared it I could see it was rattling from the force of the gale outside. I waited a few moments, savouring the warmth and dryness of the barn…before pulling open the door.

I was met by a cold, mad rush of wind and rain. It blew roughly in my face, causing me to squeeze my eyes shut and want to run back to my bed of hay. But instead I took a few steps outside onto the street, and looked around. There weren't many people about, and it was still quite dark- so at least I wasn't too late up. I wondered whether the man's house was the one to the right of the barn of the left. As it was, I didn't need to look too far.

"Miss! What are you doing out here?" I turned to see the man walking towards me, shielding his face from the rain. He gestured to the barn and we went back inside.

"I was looking for you, actually", I explained when we were out of the rain. The man had a small glowing lamp with him, which enabled me to see more of the barn. It was really quite small, but it held a few animal pens with some chickens, one pig and a large sleeping ox.

"I didn't know when I needed to go up to the castle."

The man smiled, obviously pleased that I had remembered. "Not for a while yet- you'd barely be able to see where you're going! But since you're up, you wouldn't mind helping me load the grain would you?"

I agreed, and we began to carry some sacks of grain at the back of the barn outside, to be stored in the back of a small cart. At first the man seemed unsure of letting me carry too much, but he soon saw I was quite strong for a woman: my early days of helping on our farm had seen to that.

Once the grain was stored, he woke the large ox and fed it some dry grass. I was to lead the animal up the castle while it pulled along the cart behind. It was a bit of a disappointment to learn that I wasn't going to be travelling in the cart either, but I think I had guessed it was too small for that, and the ox wasn't going to find the way on its own.

By the time the ox was securely fastened to the cart, it hadn't lightened up much outside due to the heavy rain clouds, but there were more people moving around on the street, signifying the start to the day. Apparently the man wanted me to leave as soon as possible, as the taxes were overdue.

They were supposed to have been paid a few days ago, with everyone else's, he said, but he had been waiting for the rain to stop before he made the journey. I could see the worry on his face as he told me this- but I couldn't fully understand it. He was an old man- surely they could understand that it would be dangerous for him to walk miles in this weather?

Anyway, for this reason I left as early as I could. As soon as the streets and sky turned from black to a wet morning grey, I took the reins of the ox. "Remember to give my apologies to the sheriff", the man told me in a last few words of advice, " and try an be as polite as you can. And go around the outer walls, remember miss, round to the animal section. That's where you take all the grain."

"Ok", I smiled, and set off down the street. I wanted to tell him not to worry- he looked so anxious when talking about the sheriff that it was beginning to make me nervous too.


End file.
